Ellery Hospital sent me an automated reminder call that essentially said: press one if you’re completely brain dead and have to be reminded you have an appointment to verify they cut all the cancer out of your body, press two if your appointment is a bright yellow blinking beacon on your calendar that obliterates everything else on the page, or press three if you were trying to put your appointment out of your mind and this message just wrecked your day. I pressed three.
Three weeks had passed. Another full day at the Cancer Center was in order. First they wanted to peer inside me again with a CT scanner. Then, I had an appointment with billing to pay my $1000 out-of-pocket fees, then see Dr. Lander in the afternoon. Letitia wasn’t happy that I was missing another staff meeting, yet she couldn’t argue with my work product. The executive committee was bowled over by the presentation I prepared for her on copper trends just the day before.
I considered swinging by the hospital the night before to pick up the contrast solution, but the idea of having that stuff in my house creeped me out more than the idea of sitting in the orange waiting room drinking it. I did step into a convenience store after picking up my food at Lucky Lee’s for a bottle of red Gatorade. As I waited to check out, I thought about Cherry Red Tracksuit Woman and mentally thanked her for giving me the Gatorade tip.
The CT scan went well enough. I got there on time, the red Gatorade masked the taste of the contrast as promised, and I chugged down the Gatorade-contrast mixture without any trouble. The people in billing were pleasant. They even gave me a handful of Halloween candy on my way out. The whole morning was remarkably painless. It was a bit disconcerting.
My appointment with Dr. Lander was over before my clothes had lost my body’s warmth. She checked my cervix, said my scans were clear, and proclaimed me healed. I wandered over to the checkout lobby feeling like I had missed a step.
I moved forward in the line snaking down the hallway a few times when I heard my name rumble behind me. Immediately, an icy hand of fear traced a finger down the length of my spine. Dale! He’s found me. The hospital must have tracked down Mama for some reason and told them where I am. No, that can’t be. There’s that whole HIPPA thing.
“Lara,” the voice croaked again, slightly louder this time. I set my jaw and slowly turned my head, afraid but prepared to feel Dale’s hot breath in my face. I didn’t expect to see Jane waving at me from the back of the lobby.
I jumped out of my place in line and went over to where she clutched the low railing skirting the checkout lobby. “It’s nice to see a friendly face,” Jane crackled. She had metamorphosed into a cancer patient in the past month. Jeans and a loose silk caftan had replaced the black power suit and red heels. Her long silver hair was twisted on top of her head with a lacquered clip. She looked pale and grim.
“Do you need some help?”
“Thanks. I’m feeling pretty wonky all of a sudden. It’s this god awful place.” Jane placed a hand on my shoulder and leaned ever so slightly on me as we joined the back of the line. Her loose grey tunic was as soft and cool as fog against my palm when I took her elbow. “So, how are you?” she asked.
“Okay, well, you know, not good.” My breath caught in my chest as I realized Jane was the only person on the entire planet that knew I had cancer. I hadn’t told anyone about the diagnosis or procedure; there was no one to tell. Jane squeezed my shoulder slightly, even though I propped her up. I took a deep breath before going on, “I’m fine. The doctor just told me I’m healing fine.”
A man behind us harrumphed as the line moved forward. Without thinking about it, I grasped Jane around the waist to help her step forward. Her vertebrae felt like knots in a birch limb.
“So, are you?” Jane asked.
“Am I what?”
“Healing.”
“The doctor says I am.” I bit my lip. I would never fully heal. A vital piece of me had been cut out forever, but I couldn’t tell Jane, right there in the checkout line, that I would never be the same. Never be whole. Jane had her own cancer to worry about. Why would she care? “It’s only been a few weeks… I guess I don’t really know yet.”
We jerked forward again along the well-worn path in the carpeting. “Is this it?” Jane asked. “Do you have to have any further treatment?”
“Radiation, in a few weeks.” I didn’t want to think about radiation. I wanted to enjoy talking to Jane. “You?”
“Chemo,” Jane said. Her manicured nails dug into my skin as she grabbed my arm with a surprisingly strong grip. The smell of fear mingled with her Chanel No. 5. “They told me about it just now. Right before they put this… thing… in my chest.”
Jane reached inside the slit of her caftan to scratch at a large bandage covering her collarbone. Apprehension as bitter as day old coffee trickled down my throat. I knew from my reading that a Hickman catheter could be permanently implanted in a cancer patient’s chest to protect their veins from the caustic chemotherapy drugs.
“I start next Monday,” Jane rasped.
“So soon?” I didn’t know that much about chemotherapy, but I associated it with uncontrollable vomiting and pain. I didn’t want that for Jane.
“Yeah,” Jane replied. “No surgery. I thought I was going to have surgery. They told me I would have surgery.” She squeezed my arm even harder and growled. “He told me I couldn’t have the surgery because the tumor is too big. Can you believe that? There is a committee somewhere that decides which tumors are too big to be removed.” Jane pursed her lips and blinked rapidly as if to hold back tears.
The line moved forward another step and Jane finally released my arm to steady herself on my shoulder. I flexed my fingers behind her back to get the feeling to return to my hand.
“You know,” Jane said, “I keep coming back to the same thing. He said that ‘chemotherapy would yield the best outcome.’ Not preserve my life. Not eradicate the cancer. Yield the best outcome.” Jane’s body pulsated with emotion making the stray tendrils that had escaped her topknot tremble around her long neck. “I… I don’t know what to do with that.”
Jane had articulated exactly how I had been feeling since my procedure—I don’t know what to do with that. I could stare at the books I borrowed from the library until my eyes were as dry and fuzzy as the text, but I still didn’t know what to do with my feelings. My brain understood the facts but my heart still told me the cancer was a mark of my shame.
Jane pulled her shoulders back and thrust out her quivering chin. “This is not who I am, Lara. I am not just another woman in her sixties diagnosed with cancer.” She stared at a woman approximately her own age in a pink ribbon bejeweled tracksuit and pink ball cap covering her bald head.
“I am not one of these people,” Jane spat. “I will not be at the mercy of microscopic terrorists nor will I be beholden to nameless, faceless medical boards.” Anger made Jane’s breathing even shallower. Beads of sweat formed on her upper lip and neck. Her voice was shrill as she tossed her head back to examine the full expanse of the checkout lobby. “Can you believe this place? Look at the inefficiency in this system. This is not the way it would be if I were in charge. What’s the point of this line? Why don’t they have a few computer kiosks out here so we could simply use a touch screen to schedule our next appointment and then drop our forms in a slot? It would be so much more efficient to coordinate schedules with a machine than have to wait in this stupid line to talk to one of those chipper little ninnies up there. They have no added value.”
Jane’s eyes were beginning to roll back in her head and her breathing sounded like a clogged drain. The people around us were staring and giving us extra room. Frightened Jane would faint, I placed my palm against the center of her back and said, “You start chemo next week?” This seemed to pull Jane back from a precipice.
She blinked a few times then pointed to a plastic folder in the tooled leather bag slung over her arm. “They gave me another pile of pamphlets. My son can read them.” Silver bangles trickled down Jane’s arm as she pressed her left hand against her chest and tried to take a deep breath. I could feel a gurgling sensation through Jane’s slender back. “They tried to tell me what to expect. I didn’t absorb any of it. A sweet little nurse even gave me a tour of the chemotherapy room after they put this thing in my chest.”
There was horror in Jane’s eyes as she turned to face me. “They were ghouls in barcaloungers, Lara. People were watching television and knitting with tubes hanging out of their arms. It’s not right. They try to make it homey, but there is no hiding the fact that they are pumping poison into those people.” Jane’s lips began to tremble again. “No… I don’t want to do it. They can’t make me do it.”
Neither of us noticed that it was finally Jane’s turn to pass in her encounter form until the man behind us poked me in the back and grunted, “Hey Lady, I don’t have all day here.”
I reared on him and snapped, “Back off! Can’t you see she’s really sick?” The room stood in stunned silence as I helped Jane to the counter. I had committed the cardinal sin of speaking the truth. We were all sick. None of us had time to wait in line.
We stepped to the counter arm in arm. The receptionist mechanically took both of our encounter forms and handed me both of our insurance receipts. I felt a flush of pride to have Jane clinging to my arm as the room full of people watched us walk out into the busy corridor.
“Thank you,” Jane said when we were a few yards away. “I hate a bully.”
We walked companionably to the bank of elevators. “Are you parked in the garage?” I asked.
“I called my son a while ago,” Jane said, resentment deepening her already gruff voice. “He said he would pull the car up in front of the main lobby.” I pushed the button for the ground floor. When the doors closed, Jane squeezed my arm again. “No laughing, okay? I don’t think I could take that again.” I blushed at the memory of our last elevator ride together and stared at the safety instructions on the inside of the doors. “Oh, I’m just kidding, Lara. Fall apart all you want. What the hell.”
In the vast, sunny reception lobby, I spotted Jane’s son through the windows—the same blonde hair, the same angular build, the same fierce expression. He was pacing in front of a sleek grey Jaguar and shouting into his cell phone. We stepped through the automatic revolving doors, stopped beside the car, and listened to him yelling about appliances needing to all be the same color.
“Tom!” Jane banged on the roof of the car. “Unlock the doors.”
Tom jumped, finally noticing us standing there beside the car, and quickly ended his phone call. He ran around the front of the car and took his mother’s elbow. “Thank you, nurse. I can take it from here,” he said dismissively.
Jane gently elbowed him in the ribs as she transferred her grip from me to her son. “They don’t send out a nurse with me, silly. This is my friend, Lara.”
Friend? I don’t have friends.
“Okay, Mom,” Tom said without giving me more than a cursory glance. “Let’s get you out of here. You should be home resting.” Tom unlocked the passenger side door and helped his mother slide into the low car before running around to the driver’s side. Before pulling the door closed, Jane pressed one of her business cards into my hand. “Thank you, Lara. I’m sorry I’m such a mess today. I hardly asked you about yourself.”
I gripped the rectangle of paper like a prize. “I’m fine, really.”
“We should meet for coffee sometime. I don’t know how much I’ll be working for a while, but you can always get a message to me at that number. I’d like to know how things work out for you.” I was stunned that Jane would want to see me again. “Do you have a card?”
“No, they don’t give people like me business cards. But, here.” I pulled a piece of chocolate out of my pocket, ripped the paper wrapper off, and wrote my cell phone number and email addresses on the inside. We said a hurried goodbye before Tom pulled away from the curb. I opened the foil inner wrapper and licked off the melted chocolate as they drove away.